The Cost of Disbelief How the OneBC protest at UBC exposed the high price of settler anxiety

by John Wirth, Local Jou9rnalism Initiative Reporter

The Clash at the Dialogue Centre

On January 22, the plaza at the threshold of the Indian Residential School History and Dialogue Centre (IRSHDC) at the University of British Columbia was transformed into a profound wall of resistance and orange fabric.

The sound of drums and chants from approximately 800 students, faculty, and survivors gathered there was not to protest, nor to provide a counter-argument. They were peacefully present to shield a site of testimony from those who would desecrate it. Yet, as Dallas Brodie and her OneBC “band of misfits” were escorted off campus by the RCMP, they sought to frame the day as a failure of academic freedom. While Brodie’s group was removed, Frances Widdowson remained the sole arrestee of the afternoon, having refused to depart the campus—though she was later released without facing charges.

This tension was not a clash of two equal “sides”; it was a conflict between the lived realities of survivors and a political group that uses the language of the university to cast doubt on historical atrocities. The largest blockade to their credibility is their own voices, which shatter their “intellectual” veneer. As she told APTN reporters at the event, Widdowson said, “I’m here to restore UBC to an academic institution, which it is not right now. It is a propaganda outlet for indigenization activists.” In response to a question about residential school survivors lying, she added, “No, I don’t think residential school survivors are lying. I think they’re misremembering.”

The “Respectable” Façade: OneBC’s Playbook

To understand the strategy behind the OneBC campaign, one must look at the “respectable“ mask Brodie maintains in her official outreach. Only days after the failed protest, she—through her dubious standing as party leader—promoted “UBC Debates,” a forum examining issues such as international labour with almost clinical, intellectual detachment. By using the same branding to request a “structured debate“ on the 215 children found at the Kamloops Residential School, Brodie attempts a rhetorical sleight of hand. She frames the existence of unmarked mass graves not as a documented human rights tragedy, but as a compelling viewpoint up for debate.

The act itself is designed to back the university into a corner—a lose-lose situation that either validates denialism as legitimate academic inquiry or brands the school as a “woke” institute that suppresses the very dialogue it claims to champion.

The Anatomy of Denial: Gaslighting as “Academic Inquiry”

The comment Widdowson gave to APTN was not a quick, off-the-cuff remark; her statements are the refined product of a career built on the dismissal of Indigenous trauma. Widdowson is an academic whose career at Mount Royal University ended in a high-profile termination following claims that residential schools provided Indigenous children with “educational opportunities.” She has spent years testing the limits of academic tenure as a shield for denialism.

When she asserted to APTN that survivors were simply “misremembering,” she was employing a practiced form of gaslighting—one that attempts to strip survivors of their credibility without the “indecency” of calling them frauds, effectively shifting the burden of proof back onto the victims. For Widdowson, the Dialogue Centre was merely a stage for her ongoing crusade against “Indigenization activists.” However, as the Union of BC Indian Chiefs (UBCIC) noted in their open letter, this is a “pattern of hate.” Her past controversies reveal she isn’t interested in the evidence of the 215 children at Kamloops; she is interested in maintaining the settler-colonial narrative her academic career was built upon, regardless of the human cost.

Settler Anxiety

Dallas Brodie said at the protest, “The situation is that if your parents do die, you can’t bury them in your backyard. You’re not allowed to do that in Canada.”

Brodie seemed overwhelmed by the cacophony of voices objecting to her presence. her flustered comments centered on burying parents, rather than parents burying children. Absent from her red herring was love and respect. When these children were laid to rest, they were interred unceremoniously by uncaring hands that held the legal responsibility for their upbringing.

To debate the modern difficulty of private burial is a legal distraction. While Brodie uses the law to argue these graves shouldn’t exist, landowners in the Chilliwack Valley are finding the opposite to be true. To them, the legal reality of ancestral burial mounds on their property isn’t a ‘debate’—it is what one owner called a ‘bottomless pit of Hell.’

If one wants more info on this, they may see this video by CBC The National.

This exposes the contradiction at the heart of the OneBC playbook: they use modern law to deny the dead, while the law itself is already busy protecting the very graves they claim are impossible. On the UBC campus, Brodie looks at history and sees “propaganda”; in the valley, a settler looks at a grave and sees a financial liability. Both perspectives share a common root: the belief that the presence of Indigenous dead is an intrusive ‘defect’ in the settler’s world.

The Institutional Vacuum: UBC vs. The Community

The UBC administration has faced heavy backlash from its own news outlet, The Ubyssey. A statement from the Indigenous Student Society righteously shames the institution: “We are extremely disappointed in UBC for failing to make any public statement renouncing this group… Indigenous students have a right to access their academic spaces without fearing for their safety.”

Before the event at UBC, OneBC attempted several “protests” at other institutions. The University of Victoria (UVic) and Thompson Rivers University (TRU) both issued public statements declaring the group was not authorized to stage events on their campuses. Dr. Airini, President of TRU, stated that individuals would be instructed they did not have permission to hold the event under the B.C. Trespass Act.

Brodie, however, sees herself as a leader of martyrs. In her request for debate, she claimed her group was met with “harassment, intimidation, and violence.” This claim rings hollow given her history. Brodie was previously removed from the Conservative Party of BC for her denialist statements and briefly lost leadership of OneBC following a vote of no confidence. It is a bitter irony that Brodie—representing Vancouver-Quilchena, the second-wealthiest riding in the province—stands on the ancestral lands of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam) people to tell survivors their memories are incorrect. Her privilege allows her to treat the ground beneath her feet as a political stage, while for the Musqueam, that same ground is a ledger of stolen lives.

Conclusion: Beyond the Debate

Is it possible for a university to truly commit to “Truth and Reconciliation” while leaving the door open for those who deny the “Truth” part of the equation? A university cannot be a neutral arbiter of facts while hosting those who seek to erase them. By allowing Brodie and her band of misfits to treat the IRSHDC as a “propaganda outlet,” UBC signaled that the safety of its Indigenous students is secondary to the “academic” comfort of denialists. If Truth and Reconciliation is to be more than a corporate slogan, the institution must recognize that some truths are not up for debate—and that the “bottomless pit of Hell” is not found in the discovery of graves, but in the silence of an institution that refuses to name racism when it arrives at its front door.